In the past few weeks, many Berkeleyside readers have enjoyed a front-row seat as one local resident took a novel approach to resolving the years-long theft of his Wall Street Journal. The story gained national attention but we’re proud to say: You heard it here first.
The Wall Street Journal couldn’t resist joining in the fun after it read about a note written by local businessman and photographer Richard Nagler to a thief who had deprived him — on and off for ten years — of his subscription to the newspaper.
After we published the story of a novel note to a newspaper thief earlier today, things began to fall into place.
Late last year Berkeleyside published a story on “Berkeley signs” — the notes, sometimes handwritten, which Berkeley residents are apt to post asking fellow residents, often most politely, to do something — or, more likely, to stop doing something.
For his new collection of images, Berkeley photographer Richard Nagler spent a lot of time in museums. He also spent a lot of time waiting. Stationed in front of a work of art, he would wait for someone to come along and complete it. The serendipitous, unposed results come from both Nagler’s creative eye as well as his patience.
When Peter Selz arrived in Berkeley in 1965, the university only had a small art gallery to display its modest collection of art. Selz had been recruited from the Museum of Modern Art in New York City to oversee the construction of a new, contemporary museum, the Berkeley Art Museum on Bancroft Way.
Richard Nagler was a painter until he decided to be a photographer. “Paintings are about the painter,” he told a rapt audience at UC Berkeley’s Center for Photography at the Graduate School of Journalism on the evening of November 30th. “Photography is about ‘the other’, about what you see. It’s not about yourself. That’s why, emotionally, photography spoke to me.”
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